Syracuse outlasts Connecticut in 6 overtimes, 127-117

Michael Heiman/Getty ImagesConnecticut's Kemba Walker lies down after missing a potentially game-winning shot in the fifth overtime against Syracuse early Friday morning in the quarterfinals of the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden. The Huskies finally ran out of gas in the sixth overtime and lost, 127-117.

NEW YORK -- At 1:18 a.m., Jonny Flynn wanted so badly to sit. There was just no more that his small body could give. He had simply, absolutely, unequivocally nothing left in the tank. But there were still 25 seconds left in this night. A night that seemed to never, ever end.

He couldn't sit down for fear that his body might completely cramp up and he wouldn't be able to get back up. And he just couldn't stand any longer. So he tugged on his shorts, grimaced and squatted just enough so he could fool his body into thinking he was relaxing.

On a night like this one, it was all about finding the little moments to catch your breath.

A night that was simply, absolutely epic.

"I was so relieved when the game was over," a brutally exhausted Flynn said afterwards. "We finally get to go home and rest up. But there were so many chances, like when (Paul Harris) missed the layup. I kind of flung my headband into the crowd and was like, 'Why? Why? Why can't we end this game?'"

And that was after the fourth overtime.

There were still two more left to play.

When the final horn sounded for the sixth time in the game, it was Flynn who fittingly got to dribble the clock out during Syracuse's 127-117, six-overtime victory in the quarterfinals of the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden. In real-time, the game lasted three hours 46 minutes. Flynn got to stop dribbling after what must have felt like forever, as he played 67 of the game's marathon 70 minutes.

And once the horn sounded at 1:22 a.m., he knelt down.

He could finally rest.

"I've got no words to even try to describe it," Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said. "I've never been prouder of any team I've ever coached. We lost our guys, big guys first and they had some in there still and somehow we survived."

At the end of what was the second-longest game in college basketball history and the longest in the 30 years of the Big East Tournament, Flynn was one of the few recognizable names still left on the court. This game began with the Hasheem Thabeet's and the Eric Devendorf's, but ended with a completely different cast.

Players like Justin Thomas and Kris Joseph -- both rarely used during the season -- got to celebrate the end of a long and historical night with the Orange's point guard.

"We were just praying and hoping that he had enough," said the freshman Joseph. "Every timeout we called, Jonny was stretching so he didn't cramp up. Getting a lot of liquids in his body, staying hydrated. We were just hoping that he would be able to go through however many overtimes we had left."

'I THOUGHT IT WAS OVER'
A fingernail.

That's what turned this game from a down-to-the-wire finish into an all-time classic. It was a fingernail.

Syracuse had taken command of this game with just under four minutes left to play. Orange forward Arinze Onuaku picked up a loose ball after Thabeet blocked a Flynn layup attempt. That gave the Orange a comfortable, but not lock-down, lead at 64-57. That's when the Huskies went to work.

Connecticut began to furiously hit shots until the Huskies tied it up with less than two-and-a-half minutes left. Over that span, the two teams traded baskets and free throws until Syracuse took a two-point lead with 27 seconds left on a Kristof Ongenaet free throw. The Huskies then put the ball in the hands of their freshman point guard Kemba Walker to make a play.

As Huskies coach Jim Calhoun bounced up-and-down in his seat urging his team to make something happen before they either ran out of time or couldn't get a second chance, Walker passed the ball to Craig Austrie.

With eight seconds left, Austrie put up a prayer in the form of a runner near the key. It was too high and fell to the other side of the rim. Walker miraculously scooped it up and laid it in to tie the game with 1.1 seconds left.

There seemed to be nothing Syracuse could do to win the game in regulation, except heave a football pass down-court and hope for the best. Flynn threw the ball to the 3-point arc in Devendorf's direction, but Huskies forward Gavin Edwards tipped it. It still managed to fall into Devendorf's hands. He stepped back, shot it and ...

"I definitely thought it was down," Flynn said. "I thought it was a no-doubter. But I guess the officials saw something else. It was a great shot. It was amazing how we even got the shot off. I didn't think he could get the shot off."

Syracuse's team exploded. Devendorf leapt up onto the front table of press row, thumped his chest with his fist and pulled his jersey out. He had won the game.

Or had he?

"I thought it was good," the Orange's junior guard said after his 22-point night. "I thought it was over. They told me I was one-tenth of a second off."

Upon further review of the video, the replay showed the ball just barely still in the hands of Devendorf as the red light around the backboard lit up and the clock ticked to :00.

The ball was still on the nails of his fingers as time expired.

The capacity crowd -- all of them on their feet in anticipation -- waited for an announcement of the call. When the words "The shot does not count!" blared over the public address system, the Garden crowd split into equal parts agony and ecstasy.

"I was hoping it didn't go in," said Connecticut forward Jeff Adrien, who had two game-winning shot opportunities of his own fall short. "But I definitely didn't think it was going to lead to this."

FATIGUE SETTING IN
As the Thursday night began to stretch into Friday morning, Dr. Irving Raphael was torn about what he should be concerned about.

He was the seated behind the Syracuse bench and was cheering as a fan, but as the team's head physician he was worried about the health of the players on both sides. A truer test of the Hippocratic oath there might not have ever been.

"Most of my thoughts were as a fan," a relieved Irving said in the bowels of Madison Square Garden after the game. "As long as they're still all standing, I was feeling okay. But absolutely we worry about (fatigue). Between our strength and conditioning staff and our trainer, these guys are in great shape. But nobody is used to going six overtimes."

One look at the box score shows the brutal truth of the historic game: a combined 10 players from both teams played 45 or more minutes. Seven of them played 50-plus minutes. Three played 60 or more.

"It was tough mentally and physically," said Thabeet, the Connecticut center, whose 7-3 frame absorbed 53 minutes in the game. "We were just trying to stay composed the whole time."

Syracuse and Connecticut games are always tough, physical battles. Players like Thabeet and Onuaku are generally sore enough for a week playing each other for the normal 40 minutes. But last night they were forced to hit the wall and then go through it with no questions asked.

As two overtimes became three and then four and so on, every little poke or ache felt like a punch to the gut.

"We hit the wall in all overtimes pretty much," said Syracuse guard Andy Rautins, who hit a crucial 3-pointer in the sixth overtime to give the Orange momentum to win.

Raphael said afterwards that both teams should be fine, provided they're all given the necessary rest and fluids. For Connecticut, that won't be a problem. With the loss, they were eliminated from the Big East Tournament. Their next game won't be until next Thursday or Friday in the NCAA Tournament.

Syracuse however, will have to play seventh-seeded West Virginia Friday night in the semifinals -- less than 24 hours after its marathon win.

"I was amazed that they could stand at the foul line and shoot," Raphael said with a chuckle. "Because usually you don't have your legs, since those are the first parts of the body to cramp. And those guys are running up and down and they're still shooting foul shots. It's superhuman what we just saw tonight."

NEXT IN LINE
Kris Joseph had no idea what he was doing.

He got the coveted tap on the head from Boeheim that every reserve player dreams of getting. Only this wasn't going into the game for mop-up duty or to spell a player for a small stretch of time. This was get in there and play. And do it at a position he'd never played before -- center.

"I didn't know I was going in at center until I looked up at who was on the court and I figured I just had to be the center," Joseph said. "So it was new to me, definitely. But I had to take on the challenge. I wasn't going to let my teammates down and I wasn't going to let my coach down."

The 6-7, 220-pound freshman from Montreal made sure to do just that. In the first five overtimes, Syracuse didn't win a tip-off once. When it finally came time to tip it off for the sixth overtime, Joseph stepped up to center court. And he won the tip.

And they got it from the most unlikely source. But in a game that goes as long as this one did, coaches don't get to pick who makes the big plays -- especially when eight total players foul out. As much as this game was about Flynn and Harris and Adrien and A.J. Price, it was the reserve players that kept this contest going long into the early morning hours.

Scottie Haralson, a Connecticut freshman from Jackson, Miss., played five minutes. He had averaged 4.2 for the season. Syracuse senior Justin Thomas from Los Angeles played seven minutes and was charged with guarding Price. He averaged 2.3 minutes per game before last night.

"Jonny told me that I've got to be confident out there," said Thomas, who had a block and a rebound. "You can't go out there and be scared. This is basketball. I've been doing this since I was five years old -- we've all been doing it forever. I play against Jonny everyday in practice. And that gets me ready for situations like this."

Well, almost. There is no six-overtime situation in a coach's practice schedule. That's why putting in players like Thomas and Haralson were acts of blind faith in a postseason tournament with NCAA seeding implications.

"After the second overtime, I just -- I'm not going to lie -- I was ready to go home," Thomas said. "I was getting tired. But then Rick (Jackson) and some other guys came up to me and they were like, 'J.T., be ready.' And I'm looking up and there were four fouls for three people and I was the next guy in."

SIXTY-SEVEN MINUTES
As Flynn sat in the cramped, dank locker room after the game, being bombarded by questions from reporters left and right, he gripped a Gatorade bottle to stop his hands from shaking.

His legs -- put through a taxing and grueling night -- were still fighting to attain atrophy. But there were no regrets. This was a 67 minutes he'd gladly play again. But even if it looked like he could have played more on this night, that surely wasn't the case.

"It may have looked like that," Flynn said. "But I don't think my body could have taken it. I went out there and played my heart out, but when your body starts to shut down -- 67 minutes is a hard task for anybody."

The sophomore guard had a bunch of gaudy numbers on this night: 34 points, 11 assists and a perfect 16-for-16 from the free-throw line (including 9-for-9 in the six overtimes). But the 67 minutes stood out like a beacon.

It was the most played by any of the 18 players that saw game action. Devendorf and Price both played 61 minutes before fouling out. While at times it may have looked effortless, Flynn assured everyone that it was not.

"There was definitely a time during overtime when I hit a wall, though I'm not really sure what overtime it was," he said. "It might have been the fourth or fifth, where my legs started cramping up. I was cramping and trying to regain any type of energy that I could.

"My bench and my teammates and the coaching staff really picked me up. They rolled with me. They said, 'We need you to play this game. We need you to be yourself.'"

Members of the Huskies even tipped their caps to the effort that Flynn displayed during the game. Thabeet, who had a double-double with 19 points and 14 rebounds, said Flynn was "tremendous."

When asked about playing 67 of the game's 70 minutes, Adrien didn't even realize that was how long the Syracuse guard was out on the floor.

"He played the whole time? That's amazing right there," Adrien said in the tunnel outside of the UConn locker room. "Almost 70 minutes? It wasn't like he wasn't doing anything too, he had the ball in his hands constantly. That's pretty good -- no -- that's amazing right there. All the power in the world to him, to carry his team and hit the big shots."

Flynn's only break of the game came with under 10 minutes left in the first half. Boeheim took him out at the 8:33 mark and sat him until the 5:43 mark. After that, he didn't stop until the final, final horn.

Essentially, until the game ended, Flynn last break was the day before.

"We kept pushing him and saying 'A couple more minutes, a couple more minutes,'" Joseph said. "But a couple more minutes turned into a couple more overtimes. But he made it."

That's not a bad way to put Flynn and Syracuse's night. Except Boeheim might have topped it.

"History," the Syracuse coach said. "That was the greatest game in history."